I was reading an obit about Mr Stiers, a lovely man by all accounts, that said he regretted not coming out as gay before he reached his 60s, because it meant he never had a meaningful romantic relationship. What a shame. Wonderful voice. RIP.

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That is such a really, really sad thing to hear, especially as being gay is not exactly rare among artistes. One wonders if he'd stayed in the closet for fear of upsetting older family members, as George Michael is said to have done. Which is also sad, as most parents probably know and should be accepting anyway.

I know whereof I speak as my gay son came out to his father and me at 16 and has had nothing but acceptance from us. We'd've been crap parents otherwise.

The rumour was Stiers stayed in the closet so long because of his association with Disney, and didn't want to jeopardise getting more work with them. Don't know how true that was, anyway it was nobody's business but his own.

The rumour was Stiers stayed in the closet so long because of his association with Disney, and didn't want to jeopardise getting more work with them. Don't know how true that was, anyway it was nobody's business but his own.

Image captionTrevor Baylis campaigned to make theft of intellectual property a white-collar crime
The inventor of the wind-up radio, Trevor Baylis, has died aged 80, the manager of his company has confirmed.

David Bunting said Mr Baylis from Twickenham, south-west London, died on Monday of natural causes after a long illness.

Mr Baylis invented the Baygen clockwork radio in 1991.

He was appointed CBE in 2015 after campaigning to make theft of intellectual property a white-collar crime.

Unlike many stage-Liverpudlians, Doddy stayed rooted in the city. There are some stories in the press today of his generosity with his time. His tight-fistedness with money was, however, not so much legendary as well-attested: I knew the lad that delivered his papers!

Odd in so many ways - look at his record sales in the 1960s - the subject of a baffled column in yesterday's Guardian - he was inescapable in that era. Boosted by the brief fashion for all things Liverpool, he survived his Revenue misadventures and emerged a weird National Treasure.

For me, he was the sprained voice of an imperfect "Happiness" projected from the speakers of Saturday morning at the ABC. He was the ritual lunchtime of Sunday on the Light Programme, to be heard at home or somewhere in a Welsh carpark with plaid flasks of tea and meat-paste sandwiches. He really had no right to go! RIP Ken Dodd.

.. and then there was the 80's (90's?) joke about him when he got caught out in some sort of alleged tax fiddle: "Ken Dodd's got two new diddy men .. diddy pay and diddy fuck" .. some of us will remember his 'diddy men' characters .. my mate at college confessed to me that he'd once played a 'diddy man' onstage as a nipper with Ken but was embarrassed about that for some reason ..

Stephen Hawking was the only person to have played himself on Star Trek, in a poker game with Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Data. He was given a tour of the Enterprise set and when he saw the warp drive, he said, "I'm working on that."

My first serious girlfriend was writing a PhD on general relativity. Specifically, she was considering a mathematical object known as a semi-infinite rod which, as the name suggests, is a rod with only one end. Being a linguist as opposed to a mathematician, I could never get past the following thought experiment: suppose you encounter the rod somewhere along its length, and wish to find the end. How far would you go in one direction before you decided you had made the wrong choice?

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that, even with her help, I could never make sense of A Brief History of Time. A remarkable mind, and an extraordinary life. RIP.